Pottstown area gets snow but escapes brunt of storm

POTTSTOWN — The tri-county area escaped the brunt of the storm early Saturday after snow forecasts were downgraded to 2 to 4 inches.

But even with the downgraded forecast, the Weather Channel’s website is reporting totals around 1 inch for the area and some residents of the tri-county area think it is just enough.

“We got the perfect amount of snow in my eyes but not even close to what was predicted. It looks like barely an inch in Norco,” Alyssa Tierney said on the Mercury’s Facebook page.

Even though the final totals for snow were lower than expected, nor’easter conditions are still affecting the area.

Preliminary data from the National Weather Service for the Reading area shows wind gusts reaching 29 mph Friday night and up to 40 mph during the day on Saturday.

The blowing snow, patches of ice and continued high winds can cause dangerous driving conditions.

Despite the strong winds and accumulating ice, very few residents lost power.

“We saw a very, very, very, minimal impact,” Liz Williamson, spokesperson for PECO said. “We saw scattered outages but we didn’t see a high number of impacted customers.”

PECO did have extra crews ready overnight Friday in case they were needed, Williamson said.

Due to the rain on Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was unable to brine the streets, but the rain made it hard for the snow to stick, according to Brad Rudolph, spokesperson for the department.

“Everything is operating normally. We have trucks out monitoring the roads,” Rudolph said.

Other areas of the state saw more snow that the tri-county area.

The NWS says 7 inches of snow was reported at Summit Hill in Carbon County and 6 inches in Sciota and Stroudsburg in Monroe County as well as in Pen Argyl and Plainfield Township in Northampton County.